What does Iran’s just-concluded presidential election have in common with the recent French and Dutch referenda on the European Constitutional Treaty? The question may seem absurd on its face, given the huge differences between two western democracies and a Middle East theocracy. But comparing the results does yield some surprising – and disturbing – insights.

The most obvious resemblance is that the outcomes of all three polls were stunning, particularly in their landslide character. Moreover, all three were met with delight by American neo-conservatives and other hawks who see their Europhobe, and especially Francophobe, instincts confirmed. The neo-cons are also gleeful as they suspect that the road towards “regime change” in Iran may opened, because, with a hardliner as president, American and Western opinion may now find subversion or military strikes much more palatable.

A third similarity concerns the strong correlation between voters’ social and economic status and their preferences. The poorer, more economically insecure, and less educated a voter, the more likely he or she is to have voted against the proposed constitution in France and Holland, and for the Islamist candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran.

A final parallel is that the winning campaigns in all three votes were catalyzed by populist appeals against an entrenched elite and, less explicitly but unmistakably, against foreign intrusion or influence. In each case, the target was an elite that has sold out to capitalism and/or cosmopolitanism, and that was oblivious of the economic plight of common people, as well as their identity and traditions.

The significance of these similarities for the future of peace and democracy is far from clear. The implications, however, are hardly reassuring.

Of course, it is good that the voice of the people is heard. Healthy politics requires that common men and women are not taken for granted. But it is highly dangerous for the international order if the message of the masses is one of anger and resentment, is devoid of any credible economic program, and holds suspicion of international cooperation (particularly with the United States) as paramount.

At the opposite extreme, the gloating by US neo-conservatives should be tempered by a clear consideration of America’s interests. The US must stand by its core beliefs in an open society and a liberal international order. It cannot be good for America if liberalism (in the original sense of political and economic freedom) becomes as much a dirty word in Europe or in the Middle East as “liberalism” in the American sense is nowadays for the American right.

However flawed the electoral process in Iran undoubtedly was, no one, including its tired and discouraged reform-minded opposition, doubts that 18 million people have voted, in the words of the new president, against democracy and for a return to the Islamic revolution. The vibrant pro-Western, pro-American, and anti-mullah society, on which American and European hopes relied, undoubtedly exists, but mostly among the educated and urban middle class.

Beyond Iran’s cities, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of the death of political Islam were greatly exaggerated. This majority will never rise in support of an American-organized coup or surgical strikes. On the contrary, the most likely result of such an attack would be civil war and terrorism dwarfing the Iraqi experience.

The spectacular social and political polarization that these three elections expose can be seen as a revival of class-struggle politics, and of communist-style aspirations, if not Leninist doctrine. Indeed, it is striking that communists and Trotskyites have experienced a revival of sorts—or at least a re-legitimation—in France, and that the little that Ahmadinejad has revealed of his program calls for nationalization, particularly of the oil industry, and expropriation of the rich.

What is certain today is that the common European vision of a movement toward centrist politicians, like former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and political theorists’ claims that the emergence of large middle classes leads to centrist, non-ideological politics, is not valid in times of crisis, when extremist traditions re-surface.

To be sure, President-elect Ahmadinejad is more reminiscent of Latin American populists like Hugo Chavez or Juan Peron, mobilizing the “descamisados” against the rich and practicing resource nationalism, than of Lenin or even Castro. But what is remarkable nowadays about populist leaders who claim to “clean up the mess” of corruption and moral decadence in the name of virtue and tradition, is that their ideology comes in so many different political colors.

It can be red or green, but also black or brown. It can be clothed in religious garb, Islamic or Protestant, so long as it is fundamentalist and Manichean. It can act against evil in the name of God, or of the people, or of the nation. Its roots, its justifications and its results may vary enormously. But no matter the color and the dress, we are reminded of what in other times and places used to be called fascism.

Copyright: Project Syndicate/The Institute for Human Sciences, 2005.
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